Marta Dyczok - Böcker

This Element is a historical tour of Ukraine from the medieval Kyivan prince Volodymyr the Great through to Ukraine's twenty-first-century rock star president Volodymyr Zelensky. It presents Ukraine as an actor, not a pawn, in international history. And it focuses on people. In the past, historians wrote about Ukraine from a colonial perspective that portrayed it as a region, not its own entity. This shaped the way people thought about Ukraine and created mental maps where it was just part of something else. Put in contemporary terms, Ukraine was subjected to a historical disinformation war. This Element joins voices that are decolonizing that way of thinking by drawing a different mental map, one where Ukraine exists as itself. It explains how the people living on its lands have their own distinct history, how they shaped it, were shaped by it, and had an impact on both European and global history.

This Element is a historical tour of Ukraine from the medieval Kyivan prince Volodymyr the Great through to Ukraine's twenty-first-century rock star president Volodymyr Zelensky. It presents Ukraine as an actor, not a pawn, in international history. And it focuses on people. In the past, historians wrote about Ukraine from a colonial perspective that portrayed it as a region, not its own entity. This shaped the way people thought about Ukraine and created mental maps where it was just part of something else. Put in contemporary terms, Ukraine was subjected to a historical disinformation war. This Element joins voices that are decolonizing that way of thinking by drawing a different mental map, one where Ukraine exists as itself. It explains how the people living on its lands have their own distinct history, how they shaped it, were shaped by it, and had an impact on both European and global history.

This book does what few other works have done: it examines the role media have played in the larger political, economic and social transformations in the post communist space. An international group of scholars from various disciplines explore the complex relations between media, society, and the state in this region over the past twenty years, and present theoretical arguments that challenge dominant views. They scrutinize changes in the public sphere as well as the media itself, its role, format, agenda and quality in the context of changing values and shifting power relationships.

Ukraine has surprised many international observers. Few anticipated its declaration of independence in 1991 or its determination to move out of Russia's shadow. Dyczok redresses the continuing dearth of information on the country. Aimed at nonspecialists and specialists alike, it presents an overview of the main government policies, and the social and cultural issues facing the new state. These are placed within their historical, regional and global framework. In contrast with the generally bleak picture that international media reports present, the book suggests that Ukraine has actually accomplished a great deal in a short time. In seven years, from 1991 to 1998, Ukraine went from being a little-known nation within a non-democratic state to an internationally recognized independent country. During this period of change, it contributed to the geopolitical shift which occurred with the implosion of the Soviet Union. As such, it may be argued, Ukraine has a role to play in the search for the new international order.